


Sunshine Cake

by spiderstanspiderstan



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Baking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slice of Life, kind of??, that cake from Emil's dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 13:31:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13571574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderstanspiderstan/pseuds/spiderstanspiderstan
Summary: In which Emil puts something learned in his shared dreams to use.





	Sunshine Cake

It was wonderful to be home again. Or, close to home. Back in civilisation, at least. 

Emil’s first order of business was to take a decent,  _ private  _ shower, with the glories of respectable water pressure and actual conditioner. Wandering through the wilderness for several weeks had given him an unbreakable feeling of being somehow  _ sticky _ , and at some of the messier points, led him to consider a buzz cut. But it was over, now, at last. They were staying a few days at his aunt's, before they scattered to their respective actual homes. 

Lalli was there. Quiet, beautiful Lalli, who had spent a section of their journey entirely enmeshed with Emil’s thoughts; Lalli, who'd made him believe in magic, who’d saved his life so many times, and completely ruined any sense of elegance by spending the entirety of their time on the quarantine ship being messily seasick. 

Onni, who was maybe Lalli’s brother, had commandeered him almost immediately. There'd been a lot of Finnish ranting, and a bear hug that had made Lalli whine in anger. Once they'd gotten back indoors, Lalli had flopped face down on one of the guest beds, and been asleep before the impact.  

Emil stepped out of the shower, toweling his hair dry. 

He had a plan. 

When he'd been seven, or eight, before Sophia had given up on him, he'd had a favourite food. And he'd been paying enough attention in his dreams to pick up that Lalli liked it. 

When he'd dressed, Emil poked his head around the door of Lalli’s guest bedroom, and saw him curled up in a nest of blankets, huddled into the smallest ball possible. It looked like he was making up for the open, airy bedroom— taking up as little space as possible. Like he was hiding. Onni was watching, slumped in an armchair chair in the far corner. Both looked utterly exhausted—Onni was alert, but in the twitchy, forced way people managed to be when they were running on fumes and fear. 

Theirs was a silent, angry sort of grief. 

This time of year, strawberries were expensive, and elderberry essence even moreso. His aunt already had flour and sugar, at least. 

Emil just about sprinted to and from the shop, waving off greetings and yay-you-survived congratulations as he went. When he got back, he shooed the children and Reynir out of the kitchen with crayons and paper, and got to work.

It'd been a long time since he'd had the chance to bake. His parents allowed it, provided it was with the nannies and nobody else-- floury clothes and dough-sticky fingers were for servants, back then. Later on, they’d started making their own bread, but that was different— bread was easy, and bread was necessary. Baking bread was not a hobby. 

Emil turned on the oven, and sloppily greased a cake tin, before setting about beating the eggs and sugar.

Some of the wealthier people in the city still had electric mixers, and holy hell did Emil wish he was among their number. Lalli was great, but whether he was worth an  _ eternity _ of whisking was questionable. The eggs and sugar seemed completely unwilling to cooperate— according to the faded, handwritten recipe, they needed to be light and airy. They seemed to be dead-set on continuing life as dense, depressing goop, as if solely to spite him. 

Once the eggs had been forced into submission, Emil stirred in the flour and tipped the mixture into a cake tin, praying that he wouldn’t burn it.

The first time he’d made this cake, it had been with his mother— on one of her rare sabbaticals from work; in a stolen afternoon of free time. The strawberries had been fresh, then— when they’d had gardens, they grew them. 

The filling was more uncooperative; egg, icing sugar, and elderberry essence had to be measured out with fiddly little silver spoons. 

Emil put his thumb through yet another shell, and cursed as yolk dribbled through his fingers. He felt personally wronged by all of chickenkind. 

He abandoned his bowl of shell-shards and opened the kitchen door just a crack. Sigrun would probably be the most willing to help, but he couldn’t imagine that Sigrun and eggshells mixed well. 

He cupped his hands around his mouth. 

“Mikkel!” 

Instead, he got Reynir. Who he couldn’t even talk to. 

Emil sighed, and gestured the gangling mage over. He demonstrated his absolute inability to separate an egg yolk, and watched, irritated, as Reynir managed it in less than a minute. Of course, being unable to join the military, he’d probably had nothing better to do than learn cookery.  

There was still time before the cake part of this cake was done, so he put Reynir to work whipping cream, and started on the strawberries; chopping the fruit into wonky, wedge-shaped slices. Even after losing everything, Emil was still mostly cooked  _ for _ , and would probably be lucky to make it out of this with all his fingers. 

Reynir watched over his shoulder, cocky in the way he got when he wasn’t wholly dependant on the others for survival. Because they couldn’t throw him to the trolls anymore, he was comfortable enough to giggle at the utter mess Emil was making. 

Emil tried to smoosh the strawberries to the same thickness with the flat of a knife, then shoved Reynir back through the door so he could finish the filling. This was going to be the best cake  _ ever,  _ because Lalli was going to like it. Maybe enough to take the edge off, just a little.

When his seventeenth skewer came out clean, Emil grabbed a tea towel and wrenched the cake out of the oven. Slicing it into layers was awkward, but if he squinted, the cut almost looked straight. 

He was arranging the leftover strawberries on top, as an attempt at garnish, when he was hit by a wave of doubt. This might not go over well. He still couldn't quite explain himself without common language- and having Mikkel translate to Onni, who'd then translate to Lalli, would completely undercut his intent. 

What if Lalli didn’t like it? What if it translated across the cultural barrier as an insult?

Emil had the type of personality that some people interpreted as stupid. Stupid enough to think cake would make up for losing a loved one, probably not, but there was always a chance… 

He was interrupted, anyway. Lalli, bogged down by the lingering weight of sleep, opened the door. He shuffled across to the sink, and got a glass of water. It took him a full thirty seconds to even react to Emil’s presence, and even then it was with a drowsy nod.  

Emil panicked, and cut a fat wedge of cake. He slid it onto a plate, grabbed a fork, and offered it to Lalli. 

Lalli squinted at it, blinking. 

“It's for you,” Emil said, horribly aware that he was starting to  _ blush _ . Lalli gave him a withering look, calling him an idiot completely non-verbally.   

Emil decided to cut his losses. He cut the tip off the slice with the fork, speared it, and held it out like he was feeding a baby. He was considering making choo-choo noises, when Lalli raised an eyebrow, apparently getting the point.

He snatched the fork out of Emil’s hand, and just about jabbed it into his mouth. Like he was angry about it, and going to hate it, out of spite. 

His eyes lit up. 

Thank  _ god _ . 

Watching someone eat slice of cake in less than ten seconds was a little disgusting, but worth it for the reward of a frosting-smudged smile. 

Emil was engulfed by relief. He’d been unaware of the tension—the biting desperation to  _ do something _ . It was the other edge of the empathy Lalli had underlined for him. Pain by proxy. 

No amount of pricey processed sugar would fix that, but there was a sort of catharsis in luxury.

Lalli reached for the knife. Before serving himself, he aimed the blade carefully between two strawberries, and cut Emil a slice. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> pssst there are two meta puns in here see if you can spot them
> 
> follow me on my new fic tumblr [here!](http://na-no-why-mo.tumblr.com)


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